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In the wake of several campus shootings in the past week and the continuing LACK of any legislation for reasonable gun control, today, I e-mailed the following letter to Congressman Joe Wilson, Senator Tim Scott, and Senator Lindsey Graham:

As a mother of three young children and as a professor, I’m increasingly concerned about the rising problem of gun violence. I’m concerned specifically about how my children and I are forced to “accommodate” the new normal of gun violence while nothing is being done at the legislative level to keep guns out of the hands of mass shooters. My children come home from their public school telling me about their “bad guy drills,” where they hide in a dark closet with their classmates to prepare for the possibility of a “bad man with a gun” coming into their school. Faculty at universities and colleges across the country are being trained about how to deal with mass shooters, while, unbelievably, gun rights have been extended so that students can now carry concealed weapons on universities and colleges in eight states.

The mass shootings and gun related homicides continue to rise—clearly the status quo is not working. As your constituent, I am asking for you to support reasonable gun control such as a ban on specific types of assault weapons, banning the sale of high-capacity magazines, and closing loopholes on background checks including the one that recently allowed Dylan Roof to purchase a gun and proceed to kill nine people. I am asking that you not cave to the NRA or to the small, but loud fraction of “gun culture” Americans who will decry any reasonable measure to regulate guns.